“I was recently invited to perform as part of a Celtic themed evening focused on New Beginnings and told in story, poetry and song. I sang a few of the Irish songs I had learned on my travels over the last few years, some in native tongue. There’s something special about singing in Irish. At the threshold we were all invited to choose an object from a glass bowl and bless it with our own new beginning before placing it in water.
It was quite a special evening and I want to thank Jaya Penelope and Isabella Jennings for asking me to be a part of it. I’d like to share this poem that was read on the night and which touched me deeply.
Aminah”
You knocked out my walls
Put in windows that later
you would climb out of.
Here is the doorway that you
will no longer walk through.
This is the space
that I must build upon.
I can never remember
the precise moment you left –
the overturned chair,
a cup still warm from your lips.
The roof I will thatch with feathers
pulled from my own wings
(notice how no two are exactly
the same colour),
the ladder I built of bone,
laying fibula against femur.
But you will never see this,
the way I put myself back together.
You will never see this,
standing on the foundations of this house,
empty,
singing.
~ Jaya Penelope
Previously published in Poetry D’Amour (2015) and Going Down Swinging (2009)
